At the time of writing this, my least favourite thing about being an adult is losing people. You can somewhat optimize your life for capitalism, for a range of events and concepts but you see that thing called death, permanent loss, you can’t prepare for it.
My reaction to news of death is often sadness tinged with regret. Sadness at the permanent loss and regret at the fact that the chance to catch up and paper over any cracks is gone for good. I have met a lot of people during my time here. I am closer to thirty than I am to twenty and as I have transitioned through the years, I have acquired quite the body count. I like to think of relationships as a performance. You transition from being on first name basis with people to being in the orchestra of their lives. When death brings the symphony to a halt mid-note, you will never know what the rest of the symphony sounds like. You never know how the relationship could have played out. All you know is that this person was here and now they aren’t.
From experience, procrastination requires a special kind of hubris-an overstated sense of control of time and people. The misplaced belief that there will always be time to circle back and give people their flowers and that they will definitely be there to receive them. If they have been here this long, surely, they’ll be around when you’re done ticking those other boxes. If there’s one thing I have learned these last few years, it is the fact that time passes, and people pass too.
The way I see it, death creates two holes-one in the ground and another in the soul. The former you fill with sand, stones, and dirt, piled six-feet high. Good luck filling the other. There’s something about grief that fills you with a sense of urgency and a heightened awareness of mortality, of your smallness in the grand scheme of things (alias the universe). It is an awareness that makes you want to devote more time and effort to being alive and compensating for that loss, that absence. You want to make your time on this side of eternity count. Not just for yourself but for others. You want to be a better person.
With great power comes great responsibility is a saying I have come to agree with. Shoutout to Uncle Ben. However, like most clichés, it falls short of reflecting reality. I like to think that with great power comes great responsibility as well as the acute awareness of the work that comes with managing that responsibility. This awareness is often crippling.
Being responsible requires a lot of commitment. Responsibility is a lot of backbreaking work and on most days, scratch that, most years, I have not navigated my relationships to the best of my ability (people may disagree with this). Save for family and a handful of friends, I tend to postpone making calls and sending texts. I have almost perfected the ability to put things off until later. A superpower better known as procrastination. I wonder if there’s a place in the Justice League for people with such powers.
In the many weeks that have passed since my last piece, I have had a number of honest conversations. As a person, I want to tick an infinite number of boxes for people while they are still breathing. I want to fit into certain boxes. Friend. Son. Sibling. Colleague. That guy.
Lately, I have struggled with the sight of the people in my life struggling with stuff. It hasn’t been a walk in the park for me to admit that sometimes there is absolutely nothing I can do to help. It has been a little difficult for me to come to the reality that I cannot always be that guy. I just feel like a greasy mechanic with insufficient tools and not enough experience. These days, my wrench feels too small to fit around and fix these problems. I am slowly coming to the realization that life itself is a minefield of problems and I can’t fix every problem. Sometimes, people don’t even want to fix their problems. Yes, they are burdened by them yes, but when you haze out and see how there’s always some problem on the horizon, an ailing parent, a lost job, failing health, you realise that variety is the spice of life and problems are always right there in the diverse mix.
It is often said that you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. At this point, I do not know what eggs the omelette of my life will be made from but I sure as hell don’t want my life to be made from the eggs of self-imposed guilt. The way I see it, there is no job description for relationships. My people going through stuff is not evidence of my shortcomings, it is just life doing its thing. I have to do what I can, go over and beyond where I can, and leave the rest or become better but I cannot do whatever I have to do from a position of guilt. I have made my peace with the fact that I do not have all the answers or solutions. I am not required to.
This piece is dedicated to the memory of Miss Gloria Asuquo. For far too long, I put off the task of thanking her for the gift of words and now I’ll never get around to it. Fly high and live forever Aunty. Thank you.
